The business of sports gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry, especially in places, like Las Vegas and outside the United States, where it is legal. With the size of the industry comes the need for information, such as the current odds regarding the event to be bet on. Odds are used in order to balance the amount of money bet on each team, so as to protect the individual or establishment taking the bet from losing money. For example, games where there is a powerful team taking on a weaker team would obviously generate more bets for the more powerful team. Odds are introduced to deter some of those who would place bets on the powerful team. These odds can be in the form of a point spread (or line), which force the “favored” team to win by a certain amount of points or the “underdog” to lose by less than those points, in order for someone betting on them to collect. These odds fluctuate as bets are taken, so the total amount of money bet on one team is the same or very close to the same as on the other team. Each sports book, which takes bets, can therefore have different odds, depending on what bets they have already taken. For a prospective bettor, the current odds for each sports book are important because they may want to bet on a game at certain odds. Therefore, there is a need for real time odds information for the various Las Vegas and other international sports books.
Typically, in order to become aware of the lines/odds of a sports book, one must contact each sports book and inquire as to the odds. By the time one has contacted all of the sports books and decided on one to place a bet with, the line/odds may have changed. The present invention addresses this issue by allowing one to check all odds/lines, for each sports book, on-line, in real time. The present invention allows for the user to set predetermined lines he wants to bet on, alerts the user of major line movement between the sports books, keeps a record of the user's betting history, and allows for full customization of the display.
The first prior art is the old Don Best Sports program, DBS. This program is written in Java and accessed via the Don Best website on the World Wide Web, at www.donbest.com. The DBS Java program displays odds and lines from major Las Vegas and International sports books in real time, along with other sports gaming information. FIG. 1 shows a typical view of the DBS program, as would be viewed by the user. The new Internet program is written in the C++ programming language. It includes a line seeker feature, a major line move alert, a bet tracker, and other features that allow for customization of the display. These improvements allow for the original DBS program to be both more user friendly and practical in the acquisition of information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,564,977 to Algie teaches an apparatus for a betting parlor associated with a racetrack or totalizator company, including a display of a large amount of racing and parimutuel data, particularly periodic parimutuel or odds data and the history thereof. Racetracks or “off-track” betting parlors, in order to stimulate betting by its patrons, mainly use this prior art. It amounts to a scoreboard that relays information regarding horse racing, including real time odds for the races running at the particular track. The present invention differs from this prior art in that it allows for the real time odds for various sports over the Internet. The present invention also allows for the user to interact with the system through the line seeker, major line move alert, bet tracker, and customizable display features.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,099,409 to Brenner describes systems and processes for interactive off-track wagering. Odds, pools and payoff amounts can be viewed for a variety of complex wager types. The waging system uses totalizators to generate waging odds in real time based on the wagers. A user terminal alerts a user that a race is a bout to be run or a waging transaction is being sent. This system allows a user to get odds on, place bets on, and view horse races on one terminal. The present invention does not allow the user to place bets or watch races. The present invention provides the user with odds, for various sporting events, from several different casinos/sports books. The present invention comprises features that allow the user to customize the display of the odds and enter parameters for odds he is seeking.
The discussed prior art presents a database of information. However, this prior art does not attempt to solve the problems that the present invention is designed to answer. The present invention comprises new features to an on-line real time odds acquisition program. These features allow the user to customize the display of the odds and enter parameters for odds he is seeking.
It should be clear to one skilled in the art, that the above discussed prior art is used for the purposes of illustration and should not be construed as limiting in any way, except for the prior art elements claimed in the above patents.